Ekman's Basic Emotions

Paul Ekman · 1992

Paul Ekman's six basic, cross-culturally recognized emotions for tagging affective content in text.

Ekman's model proposes a small set of basic emotions that are recognized across cultures and expressed through distinct, universal signals: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. Each is treated as a discrete affective state with characteristic antecedents and appraisals, rather than a point on a continuous mood dimension.

This taxonomy is a compact, widely used scheme for emotion and sentiment annotation. Tag spans where the subject expresses one of the six emotions in their own words and assign the matching label (optionally with an intensity). Emotion words that appear only in the interviewer's question are not coded, and neutral or purely informational speech is left untagged.

Domains (6)

AngerANG

Hostility, irritation, or rage expressed by the speaker.

Curated skill
DisgustDIS

Revulsion or strong aversion toward something offensive.

Curated skill
FearFEA

Anxiety, dread, or apprehension about a perceived threat.

Curated skill
HappinessHAP

Pleasure, joy, or contentment expressed by the speaker.

Curated skill
SadnessSAD

Sorrow, grief, or unhappiness expressed by the speaker.

Curated skill
SurpriseSUR

A brief reaction to something unexpected.

Curated skill
Ekman P. An argument for basic emotions. Cognition and Emotion. 1992;6(3-4):169-200. doi:10.1080/02699939208411068

Conceptual framework — free to operationalize with citation. Category definitions are the author's own operational wording, not reproduced verbatim from a copyrighted manual.